Varney the Vampire eBook

And it was a wonder; for Marchdale was not an old
man, although he might be considered certainly as
past the prime of life, and he was of a strong and
athletic build. But it was the suddenness of his
attack upon him which had given Charles Holland the
great advantage, and had caused the defeat of the
ruffian who came bent on one of the most cowardly and
dastardly murders that could be committed—­namely,
upon an unoffending man, whom he supposed to be loaded
with chains, and incapable of making the least efficient
resistance.

Charles soon again recovered sufficient breath and
strength to proceed towards the Hall, and now warned,
by the exhaustion which had come over him that he
had not really anything like strength enough to allow
him to proceed rapidly, he walked with slow and deliberate
steps.

This mode of proceeding was more favourable to reflection
than the wild, rapid one which he had at first adopted,
and in all the glowing colours of youthful and ingenious
fancy did he depict to himself the surprise and the
pleasure that would beam in the countenance of his
beloved Flora when she should find him once again
by her side.

Of course, he, Charles, could know nothing of the
contrivances which had been resorted to, and which
the reader may lay wholly to the charge of Marchdale,
to blacken his character, and to make him appear faithless
to the love he had professed.

Had he known this, it is probable that indignation
would have added wings to his progress, and he would
not have been able to proceed at the leisurely pace
he felt that his state of physical weakness dictated
to him.

And now he saw the topmost portion at Bannerworth
Hall pushing out from amongst the trees with which
the ancient pile was so much surrounded, and the sight
of the home of his beloved revived him, and quickened
the circulation of the warm blood in his veins.

“I shall behold her now,” he said—­“I
shall behold her how! A few minutes more, and
I shall hold her to my heart—­that heart
which has been ever hers, and which carried her image
enshrined in its deepest recesses, even into the gloom
of a dungeon!”

But let us, while Charles Holland is indulging in
these delightful anticipations—­anticipations
which, we regret, in consequence of the departure
of the Bannerworths from the Hall, will not be realized
so soon as he supposes—­look back upon the
discomfited hypocrite and villain, Marchdale, who
occupies his place in the dungeon of the old ruins.

Until Charles Holland actually had left the strange,
horrible, and cell-like place, he could scarcely make
up his mind that the young man entertained a serious
intention of leaving him there.

Perhaps he did not think any one could be so cruel
and so wicked as he himself; for the reader will no
doubt recollect that his, Marchdale’s, counsel
to Varney, was to leave Charles Holland to his fate,
chained down as he was in the dungeon, and that fate
would have been the horrible one of being starved
to death in the course of a few days.